So, I’ve been in Perth for about 6 weeks now. As I mentioned in my previous post, the thought of coming over to Perth, 1,800 miles from any other sizable city and closer to cities in Asia than those on the east coast of Oz, was a bit daunting given the circumstances. By no means was I going to give up, however, so I got on that plane and landed on a fine April day at the (tiny) Perth Airport.

 The first week that I was here was for getting myself sorted out. I went into the office each day, but only for a token period of time after the first day (when I signed contracts, etc). I spent the rest of my time trying to get a feel for the city of 1.5 million so I could begin the house hunt, which promised to be long and quite possibly thankless. There were plenty of small chores to do as well, like finding the Department of Planning and Infrastructure and applying for my Western Australia driver’s license.

 The apartment that Schlumberger provided me with was amazing. 3 bedrooms, huge kitchen, lounge area, 2 balconies, one with city views….wow! It was located on Mount Street, which is just across the freeway from my office–it was literally a 5-minute walk for me in the mornings. It was also just down the hill from Kings Park, which is Perth’s best (and quite possibly biggest) park. I spent a number of afternoons strolling in the park, which overlooks the Swan River and Perth’s CBD. Perth is definitely what I would call a pretty city, even though the CBD’s skyline is dominated by massive cranes that are trying to expand the infrastructure of the rapidly growing city. The city’s skyscrapers aren’t ugly–the BankWest building is pretty cool-looking–and most importantly, the Swan River is actually a beautiful, deep blue color! I know this is unheard of for Australian rivers–Melbourne’s Yarra and the toxic Brisbane River come to mind–but I think the picture backs up my claim. I saw the river from the 20th floor of a nearby office building while on a client visit and it looks like the ocean (which makes sense, since it’s really an estuary filled with seawater!).

 On top of the nice views, Kings Park is expansive and I could have walked around in it for hours. As it is, I think I’ve only seen about 5% of the place. I love Fraser Avenue, which is lined with giant white gum trees, and the area around the Anzac Memorial and eternal flame. I saw that memorial in a whole different light (literally) when I went to the Anzac Day dawn service, which starts at 4.30am and runs until about 6.30am on the morning of April 25, the day that the Anzac soldiers landed at Gallipoli in 1915. I was lucky that I didn’t have to take any form of transport (besides walking) to the event because it seemed like nearly half of Perth was streaming down Fraser Avenue at around 5.30, when I finally stumbled out of bed. My entire street was completely impassable, since cars had parked on the road, on the grass, and down the sidewalks. I’d never seen anything like it in my life!

 As I walked into the park, big screens were showing scenes from World War II and later wars. As 6am approached, the screens flipped to a live feed of the services, which most people in the park couldn’t see because of the sheer numbers around them. I could just see the Anzac Memorial but I even had to stand on tiptoes for that. The silence was eerie; no one except the little girl next to me begging her dad for breakfast said a word. There was no commentating or anything–we just had to hope we could follow the people marching on screen and figure out what was going on. I wish I could have known more of what was going on, but I enjoyed the moment, watching the memorial from afar as the sun slowly rose behind it. Once the ceremonies completed, there was an inspiring speech and a flyover by about 7 warbirds, which marked the end of the official services. I’m very glad I went, since the Australians seem to remember & appreciate the Anzacs much more than Americans do their veterans.

As for the house search…I couldn’t stay in the Schlumberger-provided apartment permanently (since it costs $850 … per week!). I launched into the house search immediately upon arrival in Perth (thanks to the already-set-up broadband connection in my apartment) and started trying to whittle down a list of suburbs I’d like to live in and any apartments that looked even remotely affordable in those areas. The house market in Perth is quite absurd at the moment, since business here is booming and people can’t move here fast enough. Even the tiniest 1 bedroom fetches at least $200 a week, and you won’t get that in any of the sought-after suburbs. All I wanted was a place that was a relatively quick & easy commute from work, within my price range, and allowed pets. I soon took pets out of the equation because possibly only 1 rental property in the entirety of Perth allows them.

 I got to see quite a lot of Perth just by traveling via public transport to all of the open houses. I visited at least 10 properties in the north, west, and south of the city over the span of two weekends, but all of them had little niggles about them, like only having a tiny bar fridge and dryer in the unit but no washer in the entire complex, or being a 20-minute walk, 15-minute train ride, 25-minute bus ride, and then another 10-minute walk away from the office. The latter was in Scarborough, one of Perth’s beaches. I would have loved to live near the beach, but it was just a bit too out of the way for me, and quite a few people related stories of it being dodgy at night, so I stayed away. I did get to go to the beach after visiting a few homes there, and it was just as nice as the beaches on the east coast–plus it was novel because I’d never seen the Indian Ocean before! Unfortunately it’s getting into winter now (and it’s bloody chilly in Perth today) so I might not actually get in the water for a while, but it’s good to know it’s there!

 Another new and completely different part of Perth that I got to see a couple weekends ago was the area called “the hills.” The hills border Perth to the east and are quite a contrast from the beach and the Perth city area in general. The dirt was significantly redder than here in town, the trees were all gums, and kangaroos were hopping between the BBQs (you can’t have a proper recreation area in Oz without BBQs!). It was a fantastic day with barely a cloud in sight, yet not too hot–our group from work really couldn’t have planned it better. We had a ball wandering around, attempting to find the signed waterfalls (there were none, due to the fact that the rivers were bone-dry), eating BBQed & marinated lamb chops, and feeding leftover sausages to the brightly-colored twenty-eights (birds that looks somewhat like lorikeets) only to have them stolen by big & angry kookaburras. If only I had a car, I’d now have a great place to take people for a BBQ and nature walk when they came to visit me in Perth!

Anyway, I digress. Back to the house search. I was lucky enough to find a share house on the weekend before Anzac Day. It’s in a very good location–even in peak hour traffic, the bus straight into town only takes about 25 minutes–and I liked the apartment at first sight. It’s not the newest, but it’s very well kept up and quite big for a townhouse. Even better, it came fully furnished–my room already had a queen-size bed and everything–and was significantly cheaper than living in my own one-bedroom place. To top it all off, since I’d have flatmates (and my flatmate’s parrot Ambika, who has a huge personality of her own), I didn’t have to worry about getting a pet to keep me company! Seemed like a great deal to me, so I applied and moved in on the afternoon of Anzac Day. I get along with both of my flatmates well and it’s definitely nice to have someone to talk to when I get home in the evenings–and even better to have someone to play MarioKart Wii with!

There will be plenty more about Perth soon!

Even though it took me a long time to feel up to updating this blog again, I continued to upload photos, since it’s generally a pretty mindless activity. I’ve finally made it through my entire backlog of New Zealand pictures, meaning that after this post, there will be no more of the scenic beauty of NZ for me to pass on to you (although I could give you my friend James’ Facebook to look at, since he’s taken well over 22,000 photos in his time in NZ!). However, I hope to keep discovering Perth and the surrounding areas in the coming months, so you’ll get entirely too many Australian photos instead.

I know you guys might have been hoping for a conclusion to my previous post. It is in the works, but I thought I’d get these photos up while I was at the internet cafe.

Without further ado, here’s the list of what’s been added/updated (denoted by a ***):

New Zealand
***Queenstown: more from Deer Park Heights & the Remarkables.
***The Milford Track: from days 3 & 4 of the track (with plenty from going over Mackinnon Pass).
Milford Sound from Land: from around Milford Sound township.
Milford Overnight Cruise: from my overnight on the Milford Wanderer in the beautiful fiord of Milford.
The Kepler Track: from my overnight trek onto the Kepler Track, up to Mt. Luxmore & Luxmore Hut and back.
Kayaking Doubtful Sound: from my 5 hours on remote Doubtful Sound and the long (but stunning) trip to/from the sound.
Warbirds over Wanaka: from the biennial warbirds airshow held at Wanaka airfield.
The West Coast Road: from my day-long bus trip between Wanaka and Franz Josef Glacier.
***Franz Ice Climbing & Quad Biking: plenty more shots of me looking stupid trying to climb ice walls and from the Waiho river valley where I went quad biking the next day.
Drive Across Arthur’s Pass: from my day-long bus trip between Franz Josef Glacier and Christchurch.

Australia
Queensland Sunsets: sunset shots from a few different days in Queensland.
Queensland Flowers: currently only shots of some pink hibiscus in James’ mother’s garden, but I’m hoping to add more when I go back sometime.
Queensland Animals: shots of kookaburras and blue-tongued lizards.
My Australian Family: some of my favorite shots from some photos James’ family and I took while I was up the Sunshine Coast.
Apartments in Perth: pictures from my (very fancy) temporary accommodation. None of my current apartment, and those will probably only be available to “friends” on Flickr once I do add them.
Kings Park: the beautiful Kings Park, which was just up the hill from my temporary accommodation. Also, shots of the ANZAC Day dawn service held at the war memorial there.
Scarborough Beach: my first glimpse of the Indian Ocean!
General Perth: where I’ll chuck all my pictures that don’t fit into other sets from Perth. Right now, it’s just fireworks pictures from a display I was lucky enough to see a couple weeks ago.
John Forrest National Park: the “Australian” pictures everyone is waiting to see. These are from a fun BBQ I went to yesterday up in the hills near Perth. Plenty of red dirt, gum trees, kookaburras, and kangaroos!

So I know it’s been a really long time since I’ve updated the blog. I know it seems a bit odd that I could do so well at updating while running myself ragged in New Zealand and then not get anything posted for the month that I’ve been in Australia. It’s been a long, rough month though, and lots of things combined to completely strip me of any will to write. Now that I don’t have an internet connection at home (and won’t until the 13th) it’s made it even more difficult to update, but I’m here, and I’m writing, and I’m getting back on track.

So, over a month ago, I stepped off the Air New Zealand flight onto Australian soil, where I plan to stay at least semi-permanently (my visa is valid for 4 years). I was thrilled to see James at the airport, since it had been quite a while and a lot had happened since I saw him off at Intercontinental in January. We went up to his parents’ on the Sunshine Coast for the weekend, and I was thrilled to see them as well. I feel like I am part of the family after knowing them for nearly three years, and it was great to get a little taste of home after traveling from hostel to hostel for ten weeks in New Zealand. Because of the Mooloolaba triathlon, we ended up going to Maroochydore for our Sunday morning coffee instead; even so, it felt normal and good to be in a routine again (even if it was someone else’s!). James and I went down to the beach at Mooloolaba later on that evening and got to see a beautiful sunset. I was experiencing quite a few emotions then; staring out across the ocean, I was missing New Zealand and the carefree life I led there, since I knew I was going to have to settle down now that I was starting work, but I was so happy just to be back in the country I love with the man I love.

The week in Brisbane was relatively calm. James made a few comments about me wanting to go out and rush around seeing things, but I really didn’t need to; besides the fact that I’ve managed to rush around and see the majority of sites within public transport distance of James’ place, I was tired and just wanted a week of relaxation. I went out and did a few things, like buying a new suitcase so I could get all the junk I sent to James over to Perth and getting my visa label stuck in my passport. The most interesting thing I did was going out with Michelle twice. The first time we met up, we went back to UQ, where I have so many happy memories of studying abroad. We had an afternoon of pizza, cosmopolitans, kookaburras, and talking, and it was great. A few days later, we tried to go eat yum cha at our usual hangout (okay, we’d only been there once, but it felt like our usual hangout at least!) only to find that it was closed…but not to worry, Michelle had a backup plan and we still got to stuff ourselves silly on dim sims and pork buns!

However, on Saturday, everything started crashing down around me. This is my personal blog, I know, but I’m not going to go into a lot of personal details, especially since I refuse to air grievances on such a public forum. Let’s just say that James broke up with me–a week after I arrived in the country that I moved to for him–and it absolutely broke my heart. I felt betrayed and more lonely than I’ve ever been in my life. Needless to say, this isn’t what I needed at all to start my new life in Australia, and it’s made the ensuing weeks incredibly difficult. I’ve been lucky to have amazing support–from my family, my awesome friends, and from James’ family, who have still made me feel like I belong in it despite James’ actions–or else I really don’t know how I’d still be here, since it’s hard not to question why I’m in a place that is nearly 10,000 miles from my family when I moved here for the one person that I trusted in enough to pick up and move across the world for…when he doesn’t want to be with me anyway.

The days following the breakup were rough, but James’ family was amazing and took great care of me. I got to see his mother and father (along with Michelle, who took me in, fed me dinner, and watched So You Think You Can Dance?  with me) on Sunday and his mother again on Monday. On Tuesday, his mother, father, and sister all came to the airport to see me off, so quite a few tears ensued. Stepping onto that plane is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, especially since more than a couple people told me that they wanted me to go to Perth but I could always get back on the plane to the US if I really wanted to. I got on the plane after giving everyone multiple hugs, bawling like I always seem to do when I get on planes in Australia. Within a few hours, my problems had been put in perspective. The man next to me was really friendly and talked to me for quite a while, trying to convince me that everything was going to be okay while giving me lots of advice on how to handle the situation; a few times, he said things that set me off and I ended up in tears once again. Then, I walked to the back of the plane only to see him talking to the flight attendants and visibly upset. He had apparently just been diagnosed with cancer yet he had sat there trying to help me solve my little problems for the first three hours of the flight. He was a really nice guy with a big cloud hanging over his head…so I spent the next few hours telling him how my father had beaten cancer and how he could beat it too. I won’t use your real name, but if you’re out there, I hope you’re fighting and you’ve had some great news. You’ll live to see your children for some time yet!

Well, my lunch break is over and I need to get back to my training. Since I don’t have internet at my new apartment, I might not get the rest of this story posted this weekend (although I’ll probably go to an internet cafe when I go shopping in the city tomorrow). If not, I’ll get it written this weekend and then post it on Monday morning. I am slowly settling in, and I do like the city of Perth, which I’ll elaborate on (and hopefully provide pictures of) soon.